HIStalk features interview with VisionWare CEO, Paul Roscoe

Traditionally, healthcare has looked to technologies like EMPIs or enterprise master data indexes to accurately match patient information, but as data sharing becomes increasingly complex, the need for more sophisticated capabilities has emerged. Whether it’s organic growth, M&As or the formation of HIEs and ACOs, the opportunity for patient information to be inaccurate grows exponentially. The problem is further compounded when trying to look holistically or longitudinally at data to identify and/or analyze trends and opportunities.

“In today’s world of healthcare and care coordination across this continuum, those first-generation technologies aren’t really fit for purpose,” states Roscoe. “That’s why we started to see quite a lot of traction in the last six to nine months with a solution that was more designed to operate in this more collaborative environment - you give us the data as you see fit and it’s our responsibility to make sure that we can take that data in whatever format, match it, merge it, and send it back to you in the format that you want.”

While the most obvious data point is the patient, VisionWare can master data related to providers, facilities or an entity of any description – providing a 360° view. As Roscoe explains, VisionWare enables a lot of the analytics solutions in the market today and we’ve seen some “aha” moments with a lot vendors who have partnered with us to ensure they’re creating meaningful value from the data they take in for their customers.

“When people think about interoperability being the Holy Grail, sharing an IHE profile, HL7 document, or CCDA in itself will not solve this problem, there are still challenges where technology can help probabilistically and deterministically match these patients together. That’s what we do at VisionWare.”